


My Courtship

by Ioga



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Imaginary Friends, Mind Games, New Weird, Strong Adversary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-12
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2018-09-30 15:44:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10166264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ioga/pseuds/Ioga
Summary: Take 1: Count von Muskat would simply not take 'no' for an answer.Take 2: Jonathan had always looked after Sarah, until the day came that she no longer needed to be looked after.





	1. The Prince

I do not know what came over me. But whatever it was, it had to be incredibly potent.

Count von Muskat was a short, gaunt man. His hawk-nosed face could in theory have been handsome, had they ever been touched by an expression different from an arrogant sneer. 

Had looks still somehow proven deceptive, though, the Count's abrasive and distasteful behaviour would have soon made it quite clear that there was only one way to deal with the man: Steering well away from his petulant highness.

To my great consternation, he apparently found me fascinating for some mystifying reason. As I was but a commoner, the blue-blooded Count seemed to assume that I should be humbly grateful for his nerve-wrecking advances. My first instinct was to punch him in the face, and later revisions of the urge only got more and more violent.

I should have removed myself hastily from the site where I first sighted him, and never looked back. But for some reason I could not even begin to comprehend, I was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. 

And wherever I went, he seemed to show up with one excuse or another for bumping into me.

He asked me out for a promenade with him. I told him I would rather break a leg.

He offered to buy me jewellery. I told him I would rather sell myself on the street.

He suddenly paused in a conversation, bent my way and tapped his cheek, as if expecting a kiss. I told him I would rather digest battery acid.

He half-jokingly referred to me as his bride-to-be. I told him I would rather burn at the stake as a witch.

This went on for weeks. It was an incredible show of effort for next to no payback, particularly since I could not see what the point of his exercise could be. I was at best plain in terms of looks, I had no monetary fortunes or other power as a prize attached to my hand - in a word, I was a nobody. Even the undivided of attention of someone else was unfamiliar to me. I had been the only child of parents who had more pressing issues to deal with than showing interest their offspring, more an item of furniture to them than a cherished family member. A loner through my life, I had never been as much as half-heartedly courted by anyone before this cocky aristocrat decided to start tormenting me. 

If I asked him why he pursued me with such mind-boggling tenacity, he would give me an asinine, cliché response like "I never take no for an answer" or claim it was my sweet demeanour that attracted him, or other blatant lies.

Then things went from frustrating to thoroughly disturbing. I would catch him outside my window as I went to sleep, or find a syrupy letter by him attached to my refridgerator door, despite never inviting him into my apartment. Random personal items of mine went missing, sometimes to return quietly a few days later.

I had to do something.

So, after some deliberation and preparations, I agreed to go on a date with him. I had one condition: that I would pick the location. We got into a cab, and I gave the driver written instructions. While we were on our way, I talked the Count into giving me his phone, under some ridiculous pretence like checking it for messages from his other mistresses.

When the cab arrived in the middle of nowhere, he paid the confused-looking driver and we got off. I had specifically picked the spot so that there was minimal passing traffic, and maximal distance to the nearest house. I told him to wait a second, ran to my car, which I had left here for a quick getaway, and drove past him, waving him goodbye and - I must admit - a generous dose of my middle finger, as unladylike as it was. When I got back to civilization, I tossed his phone into the nearest bin and congratulated myself on having both taught the slimebag a valuable lesson and won myself at least a day of peace while he was working his way back through the wilderness.

You can imagine my surprise when, a mere two hours later, my doorbell rang. It was the Count, asking for his phone back and a continuation of our date in a more pleasant environ. The nerve of some people! He was still impeccably groomed, and the worst of it all, not even slightly subdued.

What would it take to get rid of this man, murder?

I tried a few more strategies on the following week, ranging from ignoring him altogether to not even letting him finish a sentence before shooting him down. Nothing worked, the man was as persistent as barnacles on a trawler.

His courtship strategy, in the meanwhile, was getting ever more aggressive. He was repeatedly violating my personal space, to a degree where I wanted to start shoving him around to reclaim it. He reminded me of my grandmother's small dogs, which would nip at our ankles to keep us in the "herd" and keep running so close to our legs we had to trip on ourselves to keep from kicking them by accident.

Right now, I was quickly nearing a phase where kicking him would by no means be an accident, though.

Then I got dismally unlucky. I was walking through a park, with a copse of elm trees lining the dirt road, when he walked up to me again, as he was wont to do whenever I found myself alone. He had a particularly intense look in his eye as he regarded me. I slowed my steps and looked at him suspiciously.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" 

He said nothing, only took a step closer to me. I reflexively took a step back, to which he responded by taking another towards me. I retreated until I saw I had wandered into the copse, and bumped into one of the trees someone had planted as a trap for me some decades earlier.

With nowhere to retreat, I could only stare in abject horror as the Count got closer. His face was getting closer to mine, it was so close I could see the individual hairs in his nose. I dizzily wondered why I should bother to even try to dodge this one. I was so tired of dodging all the time.

He gave me a chaste kiss, like a whisper on my lips. It had an electrifying effect, making me tingle from my toes to the nape of my neck. 

I tried not to show how his small victory wrenched my heart inside, but I could not stop my cheeks from flushing pink.

"See? Beats being burned at a stake, eh, honey?" he mocked, and stroked my arm in passing. I looked away and squirmed out from the too tight space between him and the treacherous elm tree.

I fled the scene without looking back. I could feel his mocking smirk at the back of my neck all the way home.

The next day, I was feeling strangely subdued. So when he offered to buy me fresh strawberries for breakfast, I let him. 

We sat down on a park bench and ate the fruit in awkward silence.

That is, until he offered to feed them to me from his hand. I peered at him like he had lost his mind, but he would not back off, citing this as something that it would otherwise not be a proper strawberry picnic between "lovers". I simply snorted at the preposterous concept. 

When he tried to forcefully push a strawberry in my mouth, however, I snapped. "Stop that!" I hissed, and slapped his hand away.

He held his hand with an exaggerated pout on his face. "Aww, you wound me, sweet cakes. Does that mean we won't move in together before the end of the week, after all?"

I simply rolled my eyes and left in a huff.

I did not sleep well that night. The combination of the last two days had been getting all too intense, while the rest of my life was not providing nearly enough distraction from the mad Count's antics. I found myself thinking about him at five in the morning, sleepless.

I was not surprised to find him at the entrance to my apartment block when I left home the next day. He fell into step next to me, and I just shrugged. I was used to him following me everywhere like a satellite in orbit.

This was to be yet another of those days, though. After we had walked a while in reasonable peace, he edged closer to me and sneaked his hand into mine. I glanced at him, simultaneously feeling slightly ill at the pit of my stomach, and resigned to my fate.

When we came to a crossing where a red light stopped us, I felt I had reached a conclusion and turned to look at him quizzically. "Shouldn't I just give in? I would become boring that way, with no challenge left, right?" Surely he would then leave me alone, at last.

He shook his head, smiling a knowing, not very pleasant smile. "No, once you fall for me, I will just crush your heart under my thumb until you pull away again." He smirked at me. "Besides, the times you've declared your eternal resistance alone are enough to keep me going for quite a while already." 

I groaned and waved my free hand in a futile gesture. "Don't you honestly have anything better to do than to harass me?"

"Why? Does it not make you feel special and loved, my dear?" He gave me a baffled look that was so preposterous I almost burst out laughing.

"No! It makes me miserable and frustrated! Why do you keep haunting me?"

"Ah, but it has to be you, sugar plums." He tapped the side of his nose conspiratorially. "After all, I am your creation."

"Say what?" I turned to boggle at him, but he was nowhere in sight. 

I could still hear his last words: "A figment of your imagination, dearest. Nothing more, nothing less."

Suddenly I felt horribly lonely.


	2. The Knight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: I was pondering whether to leave the first chapter as a one-shot or to go for a trilogy, and then saw Beautiful Mind and realized that three is altogether a better number than one. (Though I didn't write up the third one yet. You can maybe find some in It's All In Your Head.)

Jonathan B. Unseen was Sarah's assigned guardian angel. His main task on earth was to keep her out of trouble, which he achieved by whispering words of caution, encouragement or suggestions for the best course of action in her ear. 

Advice was not the only way Jonathan looked after his ward. If Sarah was too exhausted to think for herself, Jonathan was there to get her through the day safely. She could lean on him whenever she needed the support, and he was solid like bedrock. They were altogether close friends, often finding shared joy in the small wonders of the world.

Since Jonathan was a guardian angel, it was also strongly implied that he was angelic. A good guy, in other words, wanting only the best for Sarah. What she sometimes had trouble understanding, however, was how exactly his nagging was good for her – particularly the sort he would keep up afterwards, once the advice could no longer help her resolve the situation for the better. She was almost ready to call it a case of perfect hindsight on his part.

Jonathan, who had been granted infinite patience as one of his many gifts, would explain to her that his feedback and nurturing would help her grow as a person, and prevent her from getting into troublesome situations in the future. Sarah always eventually accepted his explanations, of course, grateful that she had been blessed with such a fine guardian angel.

It was just too bad for her, however, that Jonathan had some real issues with failure, both hers and his own – or the theoretical possibility of his own failure, in any case, since it was yet to be proven it was possible. He had an immense dislike of imperfection, which was completely understandable given that he originated from a realm of eternally flawless perfection. It caused him to not always be satisfied with just a light scolding after every which small slip-up of Sarah's. While she tried her best, she was still merely human. It was so very hard to not mess up one way or the other. It made her sad to cause such grief to her extremely devoted guardian angel, and she constantly aimed to be a better person to make him proud.

A turning point came when Sarah met her first boyfriend. 

Jonathan was naturally worried of the risks that rampant emotions brought to the fulfilment of his duties. He tried to quickly educate her on the best ways to handle a relationship, but it was too much too quickly, and Sarah could not absorb even the beginnings of the lessons in the state of mind she was in. They even briefly fought over it. Unfortunately, in the face of true love, or even a major crush, he had no choice but to eventually give in. He wished her good luck, and stepped into the background to give her space in her new phase of life.

Sarah would still talk to Jonathan from time to time. When she was feeling lonely, or just too stressed about something, she would ask Jonathan to cheer her up. And he would, of course. He was her guardian angel, and was not going anywhere just because he was not needed all the time. He courteously kept his warnings about how to handle everyday matters with her boyfriend to a minimum, only responding to her voiced concerns about issues she was particularly concerned about, and which she needed to air to someone, to get a second opinion.

It was one day, when she was deep in conversation with Jonathan over something small but complicated that was troubling her, that her boyfriend had come home without her noticing. He walked in on her, and quietly listened for a while before interrupting her, demanding to know who she was talking to.

Sarah knew that guardian angels were invisible to other people, because that way they could best protect them without causing a fuss. Also, she knew that not everyone had a guardian angel, and the people who did not would be horribly saddened to find out that she had been blessed with one. It was dreadfully unfair, really, but there were only that many guardian angels to go around, and the population of the earth had been growing so fast that some people had to make it through life without a Jonathan of their own.

So, out of consideration for his feelings, Sarah tried to first convince her boyfriend that she was just talking to herself, reciting a play she had read from memory. He did not believe her, saying he heard her bring up names they both knew. It was too much of a coincidence; he would not accept the explanation.

She was getting distressed, and even Jonathan was falling short of good suggestions on how to get out of the situation. Eventually, she admitted she had been stressed and did not want to bother anyone else with her problems, so she had tried to clear her head by talking it out to herself.

Her boyfriend would not relent. Who was Jonathan, then? A flame of hers? Why should he believe her now?

She had to come clean to him, tell him that she had a guardian angel who she was talking to. But that it was nothing to worry about, he should not feel jealous since he had all of her non-problematic self. Jonathan only showed up to deal with the things she did not want to burden others with. And it was not even certain that he was really a he, since angels were rather asexual anyway.

But it was to no avail. He recoiled from her, calling her a lunatic and worse. He said he wanted nothing to do with her. He told her that his grandmother had also been crazy and ruined her family's lives by her insanity and eventually by killing herself, as if expecting that she would re-enact his family's old nightmare. 

In the end, he rushed out the door, but not before telling her to be out of the house by the time he got back. Sarah was devastated at this sudden turn from normality to an apocalypse, but she meekly complied. The pair broke up without ever talking to each other again. 

Jonathan was livid. He had disagreed about the wisdom of revealing his existence, he had warned Sarah about being careful to not let others find out about her blessing, and he had admonished her about the dangers of relationships. This was her fault for not knowing enough about the boyfriend's past life, not trying hard enough to find out important things like this. Certainly, the boyfriend was a monster to break up with her like that; but it only went to show how her feelings made her blind, unable to see the evil side of people, particularly people who do not have guardian angels to keep them on the right path. She should have known better.

It was quite obvious that she would have to be more careful in the future. A fiasco like this could not be allowed to happen again. Who knew how many people the boyfriend had told, called her a freak to. How many people were now quietly judging her? Would someone come and take her away, lock her up in some kind of institution for crazy people where none of the caretakers would know the truth about people with guardian angels? Was this what she wanted?

Maybe she was even subconsciously aiming for this, trying to make herself a victim so she could blame her difficulties the next time she failed at something. Maybe she picked out this guy for the exact purpose of having an excuse to be a failure. Was this how she was trying to reward her guardian angel's efforts?

No matter what Sarah said, Jonathan would not calm down. She got angry too, she shouted since she was so hopeless, she wished that it had been Jonathan that had left instead of the boyfriend, and that she had had it with his unreasonable demands. Jonathan kept telling her she was being petulant, and not worth his help; he had nothing but her best interests in mind, and she spat on his face, on his hard work. 

Something broke inside Sarah; she could not take any more abuse from Jonathan. It had to stop. Without thinking, she pushed her angel, and when he would not stop, she punched him. When he kept spewing horrible accusations at her, she grabbed hold of his throat and squeezed until he was silent. And seeing the still furious look in his eyes, she kept squeezing so he would not start again. She squeezed until his eyes closed.

Jonathan B. Unseen sank into the ground, lifeless, until he could no longer be seen. Not even by Sarah.

And suddenly she felt horribly lonely.


End file.
